


The Library

by yesiac



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-24
Updated: 2020-01-24
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:09:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22394551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yesiac/pseuds/yesiac
Summary: Remus wants a library, so Amos builds him one.
Relationships: Amos Diggory/Remus Lupin
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3





	The Library

The thing about magic is that it soaks into anything, given enough of a chance. Take a house: fill it with arcane artifacts, books with magical properties, potions with cork stoppers. Spill those potions on the countertop when you bottle them; clean the mess with a quick spell. Summon your slippers at five o'clock each evening and always forget to use a bookmark.

Fill the house with the detritus of a thousand incantations. Eventually, the slippers jump across the floor without prompting; books fall open to the right page every time.

The house, you might think, learns. The house has habits and memory and imagination.

Look, then: here is a cottage that dreams of being a library.

It remembers slippered footfalls, shelves bowing under the weight of books, a candle always on the nightstand. It remembers the smell of leather bindings and flowers pressed between pages. It remembers an inhabitant who loved nothing more than books, and it dreams of them after he has gone.

The cottage has been slumbering for ten months, two weeks, four days. It wakes when the door creaks open, when two men with dark hair step inside, and it opens an eye to watch.

“Used to belong to a retired Wizengamot judge,” the taller one is saying. The other walks about with one hand on the wall, like he is traversing a maze, like he could get lost even in these limited hallways. “Died almost a year ago. No living relatives.”

The cottage stretches, yawns, breathes fresh air as they throw open the windows and stand together to observe the empty rooms. “He was a big book collector. Donated almost everything, but we might find some left behind. You wanted a library–this is probably the easiest place to turn into one. Look at these shelves. The ground floor practically is one already.”

The cottage rustles its eaves, waking a family of doves nested there. Remus’ mind fills with images of the walls covered in books, stretching farther than reason. He thinks it’s his imagination, but it feels an awful lot like a memory. Just not his memory.

“Alright, then,” he replies, and they get to work.

—

Amos has never loved libraries, before. They are stuffy and dusty and quiet and this has always bothered him. He has never been the sit-still-study-quiet type. He has never met a librarian who did not despise him.

The cottage does not mind. It is not a librarian.

That is to say: it has chosen a librarian, and Remus does not mind, either.

They build a library of found books and haphazard shelving. Unearth a tome or two, one under the bed, one in the broom closet. Observe cobwebs in corners and moldy patches in the bathroom. Make a plan involving disinfectant and gloves; return to find the cobwebs cleared and the mold paler than they remember it.

The cottage is doing its best. It is dreaming of being theirs.

—

Amos is learning to love libraries. He is dreaming, too.

There’s a splinter here, lodged in Remus’ palm, enclosed by an oval of angry inflammation. This is not the first. Even a cottage desperate for attention will, at times, disapprove of the remodeling.

Remus hisses with quiet pain; Amos catches his hand before he can pull it back, frowning. “Hold still,” he’s instructing, spreading Remus’ fingers and exposing the wound, using a bit of nail to scrape the spot and then he descends, leans down to press his lips to the palm and catches the edge of the sharp wood with his teeth, a gentle extraction.

Remus makes another repressed sound. The splinter is gone, but Amos’ lips have returned, cool and a little wet, a pressure that could be a kiss but there’s enough hesitance in the gesture that they could call it something else, if Remus is inclined toward denial.

Amos’ fingers circle his wrist like it’s something fragile and beloved. A thumb gently passes over his pulse point, and Amos is dreaming of being his, of trailing his lips over Remus’ wrist and not stopping there.

He feels the echo of Remus’ pounding heart in his wrist. _Not ready yet, it screams. Please, I need more time to get used to this._ Amos releases him.

(For Remus, he will build a library. For Remus, he will wait.)

“There,” Amos says, voice thick, and Remus’ hand drifts back down to his side. “No harm done.” The steps, previously silent and unprotesting, whine under Amos’ retreat. Remus is left dry-mouthed, watching after him, palm tingling.

—

Amos reveals the bedroom with a flourish. He’s bouncing on the balls of his feet, incapable of standing still as he pulls Remus’ attention around the room. “You keep saying you wish you could live in a library,” he says breathlessly. Remus has never seen him so disheveled, so animated.

Remus finally follows his wide gesticulation to inspect the room. The walls are clean and white, the bed made up with crisp sheets and a soft-looking duvet. There are books on the wall, and already Remus recognizes his favorites, the ones he reads aloud to Amos when they relax with a cup of tea.

(The cottage is an exceptional listener, too.)

“And you’ve been talking about finding a new place, so I thought–” Amos shrugs, lanky but not quite graceless, eyes on the ceiling, on the floor, on Remus’ expression, searching. “A library needs a librarian, right?”

(His eyes say _please, I love you, I see you._ His tone says _accept this. Accept me._ His posture expects rejection.)

The cottage presses images into Remus’ mind: Amos repairing the pipes, sneezing at cobwebs, patching the walls. Memories that don’t belong to him. But a love that does.

“Oh,” he says, in wonderment, in realization, “I love you, too,” and he pulls Amos close and kisses the surprise and relief from his lips.

The cottage evicts the doves. It has new tenants to worry about now.


End file.
